In my continuing rant about telemarkers, it's interesting to see that despite unemployment being at an all-time high in Norway, nobody is taking any of the 160 telemarketing jobs that are available. "Telemarketers may be unpopular, but it still comes as a surprise that the job is so unwanted during tough economic times", said firms IqTele and Centerpoint.
There's a good reason people aren't taking those jobs, chaps. It's because your companies are the rabid placenta of an unwanted wolf bitch. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your underpants!

Wow. The heatwave continues in Europe. The hottest ever day in England was back in 1990, when temperatures hit 37.1°C (98.8 in out-of-date Farenheit). The met' office reckons they could touch 38°C tomorrow breaking this all-time high. All that with 40% humidity and not an air conditioner in the country.
It's weird, but having lived in SLC for some time, the concept of near 100°F temperatures brings on the response "if only it were that cool".

And in a real "well who'd have believed it" story, sunscreen causes cancer. Seriously.
A study, published in the US Journal of the National Cancer Institute, says that people who wore higher factor sunscreens tended to stay out much longer, because they felt protected from the risk of sunburn. And a British biochemist has suggested that the cocktail of chemicals involved in sunscreens could be converted into "free radical" molecules, which could cause cell damage and lead to cancer.

This is priceless. Remember the thing a couple of weeks ago about Metallica suing a band for the use of the E and F chords? It was an extremely well put-together hoax, grafted onto the MTV website by hackers working for the band. They generated unheard-of publicity and made Metallica look like arses (which they are, of course, so bonus points there).

From the Guardian's story:
Announcing the band's decision to sue the obscure Canadian outfit Unfaith, the drummer Lars Ulrich said: "We're not saying we own those two chords, individually - that would be ridiculous. We're just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music."

It was a classic David and Goliath story - obscure, unsigned band picked on by rich rockers - and it was widely reported. As Unfaith singer/songwriter Erik Ashley explains: "Within minutes, literally hundreds of message boards lit up, including those of legitimate music news sources."

It turned up on Ananova and on DotMusic, on MSNBC, MacDailyNews and on weblogs. Industry insiders expressed their outrage in mailing lists, and music fans filled internet message boards with anti-Metallica diatribes. Radio stations played Unfaith's music in anti-Metallica protests, Rolling Stone magazine got in touch, and The Onion sent a message of support.

But they missed one key detail: the story was a hoax. What looked like a bizarre action by out-of-touch rockers was in fact a spoof that within a few hours it had taken on a life of its own.

Like any successful scam, the hoax worked for two reasons: it seemed believable, and it was beautifully executed. Metallica are well known (and frequently vilified) on the net for their legal tactics, and the story was posted on a perfect copy of MTV's news page. Because it looked like a genuine story and was written in the same style as MTV's other news stories, many net users didn't notice that the page was not on MTV's site; it even linked to an official statement on the Metallica website - again, a clever fake.

In addition to making Metallica look stupid, Ashley's prank was an effective piece of viral marketing - something that raised awareness, not through advertising, but through "word of mouse" For now, Ashley's band is the most talked-about on the web

The figures are in for the opening weekend of 'Gigli'. This is the movie with J-Lo's all-too fat arse, and Ben Affleck. The septics are pronouncing it "Giggly" instead of "Zhee-glee", and it raked in a massive $3.8M over three days. Compare that to the $90-something million that the Matrix sequel took in. So just how poorly did this pile of Gigli do? Worse than Glitter, and that's saying something.
At about $7.50 a ticket, $3.8 million represents about 506,666 tickets. Since it opened in 2,215 theaters and perhaps 5,000 screens with 16 showings over three days, some quick division indicates that at the average screening fewer than six people attended. Six.
Reviews aren't kind. I found one NY review that said the film was a "hopelessly misconceived exercise in celebrity self-worship that is enervated, torpid, slack, dreary and, oh yes, nasty, brutish and long."

That good, eh? I guess the six people in each show must have had trouble seeing the film around J-Lo's 400-pound backside.
J-Lo: "Does my arse look big in this?"
Ben: "I can't tell dear - I can't see anything because of this huge fat fucking arse in the way."

And in the "removing yourself from the gene pool" category of amusing stories (could be from the 'Americans reinforcing the worldwide belief that they're stupid' file): Thirty percent of teens surveyed don't wear seatbelts because they wrinkle clothing. Guess they'll look real purdy for the coroner. Here's the story.

Dear God the telemarketers are getting desperate. They're panicing because of the October 1st deadline for the national do-not-call registry. According to one report "Marketing officials said consumers may see more promotions in shopping malls, including contests and fliers, as companies try to reach those customers who don't want to receive telephone solicitations at home."
What?
What make these idiot companies think that if we don't want telephone calls at home, we're going to pick up stupid fliers in shopping malls? Jesus H Christ on a popsicle stick! Listen you telemarketing idiots. We don't want your calls. We don't want your products. We won't buy your products. If you start sending door-to-door salesmen, expect an increase in the number of assaults on your staff. Your claims that you sell $103billion in products via telemarketing, per year, are unfounded drivel. You know nobody buys your crap. You know you're all the scum at the bottom of the pond. Fuck me - can't you get the fucking picture? More than half the households in the US are on the do-not-call list. To any normal human being with half a brain, that would indicate that WE DON'T WANT TO BE BOTHERED BY YOU OR BUY YOUR SHITTY PRODUCTS!
You guys must be in cahoots with the RIAA. For both sets of people, the solution is so bleeding clear that you can't see it.

Telemarketers : Get Aids and die, you moral-lacking shit-infested boils on the arse of society.